quote Standing at the top of the stairs at Smash Palace, the city’s best bar that is built around a converted school bus, I can see three of my old flats.

As I read that sentence--possibly even before I read all the way to the end of that sentence--I had the thought that "bars that [are] built around a converted school bus" must be a very narrow category among all the bars in Christchurch. Even if this New Zealand city is not a particularly well "barred" location. But that's neither here nor there.

I think this is a provocative article in Salon(.com) from Thomas Nail. I'm not going to go so far as to say that he's "Nailed it" but when I see the phrase "emergent property" I usually take a closer look. Here's the title, followed by the nut-graph:

"Most brain activity is "background noise" — and that's upending our understanding of consciousness"

quote Consciousness may be an emergent property from a bunch of background chatter. The implications are huge

Among the words and phrases that appear in this article are "spontaneous fluctuations"... "cognitive flux"... "default mode network"... "cross-frequency coupling"... "jazz trio"... "free will versus determinism"... "palimpsest"... "psilocybin"... "magnetic fields"... "dreaming brain."

It's an appetizing word salad served online and free of charge by "salon" magazine.

"Most brain activity is "background noise" — and that's upending our understanding of consciousness"
Thomas Nail for "salon" magazine; February 20, 2021.
https://www.salon.com/2021/...n-activity-research/

Read-o-Meter: 9 minutes.

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 02-22-2021).]

Well, duh.

We all observe this great machine from the inside. We do it every waking hour and have done so since we were very small. Some things should be obvious.

We are all just a fleshy simulation.
Just random chemical reactions that resemble what we have categorized as life.

Am I just the part that is aware of my surroundings or is there more to me than just this.
I don't have to sit and think about how my blood moves oxygen around my body, "I" have no control over that at all.
But even though I don't think about it the job still gets done.

So all of this background noise, our meat puppet needs it to keep doing its job.
I don't think about it but its nice when my body remembers where the corner of the bed is and keeps my little toe safe.